Full Coverage

While searching on the web for medical credit and debt resources, I found a published list of estimated costs! This is from Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, and designed for use by uninsured patients. Sometimes uninsured patients are not offered the same discounts as insured patients. This list shows some sample procedures and the cost after an uninsured or charity care discount.

Here is one entry: MEDICAL SYMPTOMS – Syncope and Collapse: The sudden loss of consciousness. Cost after discount $$2,183-$3,811

I’ve always wondered if this (a syncope) is what happens after you are home from any medical facility and open the bills.

Open those medical bills!

One Way to Pay Bills. First, call the Hospital or Medical Providers office.

January 1, 2014 is a day I’ve been looking forward to for more than 28 years. No more pre-existing conditions for me. The moral of my story is – “It could happen to you”.

Dear YoungInvincibles @YI_Care : I was once one of you. Healthy, able to get life and health insurance ‘on demand’. I ran 10k races in college, skied in the winter and hiked in the summer. Then age 26 came along and my medical care changed forever. I found a lump in my breast.

Off I went to the doctor, who assured me that I was “too young” to worry about this hard, fixed in place, not painful lump. I had to manage up and advocate for myself to get a mammogram. So I finally got a mammogram (not always effective in young women with dense, perky breasts) and what do you know, the lump I had found was real-and could be cancerous. But they were skeptical, due to my age.

About this time, my doctor asked for my health history and I realized I had no idea if anyone in my family had ever had cancer. “Mom, what did your mother die from at age 45 during WW2?” -Oh- lung and breast cancer……gee thanks. Gulp. And why didn’t I know this before?

That didn’t matter, because now we had to biopsy my big lump. There was no Breast Cancer Fund, no Internet, there was no Susan Love Research Foundation. There were three books on breast cancer available. One was on plastic surgery-scratch that. I was a busy financial advisor and barely had time for this surgery, let alone another one! Yes, I was a Yuppie. Then there was this one- First, You Cry by NBC correspondent Betty Rollins. I read it, but took small comfort from the story. The third one was apparently not memorable, but we bought it.

Here’s my point, YoungInvincibles; you might not get cancer in your 20’s, but anything else can happen. I didn’t ask to get cancer in my 20’s. And although I had some increased family risk, this wasn’t even the worst thing that could have taken me to the hospital. A skiing accident might have made me a quadriplegic; a car wreck could have placed me in rehab, or e.coli could have killed me!

If I hadn’t had health insurance, me or my family might have had to cover the cost of my 2 surgeries (first one didn’t get all the cancer cells), 8 weeks of radiation treatment and follow-ups ourselves. I might have entered my 30’s with unpaid medical debt. Did you know medical bankruptcy is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.?

I visited the new version of the ACA website or www.healthcare.gov today. It’s an entirely new experience; I could easily navigate the site plus read general information on the legislation. If someone around your Thanksgiving dinner table told you a horror story like this one below, please check it out.

Yesterday, a “helpful relative” sent me a an email that contained the following “story”. Or rumor. Or misinformation.

“A recent example is that of a young engineer who has type 1 diabetes and makes between $45,000 and $55,000 per year. He signed up for a “Silver Plan” and found out that he would pay $597 monthly and have a $13,988 deductible.”

My guess is that “stories” such as this one are flowing around certain email networks. Here are some problems with this scenario: (more…)

I read this headline in The Atlantic about ACA/Obamacare information and was shocked (as in Casablanca) and for real!
There are multiple states that prevent or limit their ACA navigators (information helpers hired to work in each state) from discussing the benefits of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act). Is your state one of them? Hint: None are on the West Coast. Some oaf them are red.

“States that resisted Obamacare in the first place seem to be, unsurprisingly, the same ones that are wary of the navigators.”

The skyline of Seattle, Washington at dusk. Interstate 5 is the freeway that cuts through downtown and Puget Sound is visible to the left. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Please ask your friends and family a few questions if they are claiming sticker shock. It is possible that they did not collect all the information that was relevant to potential coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

( Don’t you wish we had lots of media video asking politicians why they are against “Affordable Health Care”?)

I found this valuable link from Consumer Reports via a notice from Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. (offering nationally known health care and coverage – Full disclosure-I am a member of ghc.org)

Three scenarios are asked and answered in this column. Check it out; then tell Full Coverage about your experience below.

The good news is that employer rate increases for large group plans increased by only 3.3% for 2013. The 2012 rate increase was 4.9% and 8.5% in 2011.

The bad news is that the employee share of costs have increased from $2,011 in 2004 to an expected $4, 969 in 2014, according to AON Hewitt. Remember, while expensive, an employer’s cost-share of health coverage costs is tax-deductible, while not usually to individuals and families. (Want to know more about why our health care is tied to employment?)

President Barack Obama listens to Safeway President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Burd during a meeting with business leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to discuss employer health care costs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While the battle rages [and the shutdown begins] about the ACA and Obamacare-perhaps you would like to know more about 5 other [Western] countries’ health insurance and coverage? The show Frontline and journalist T. R. Reid did this several years ago. What I recall about the German system is that they have single payer; and private insurance companies. For teachers, there is a handy guide and worksheets for involving your class in post-viewing health insurance analysis, writing and discussion. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/sickaroundtheworld/lesson.html Perhaps your House member should view this movie!

A family member recently sent me an email titled Sex, Drugs, and Obamacare!

(It’s not a sequel to the movie Sex, Lies and Videotape…)

It threw me for a minute until I read about physicians taking a social history from their patients-which is perfectly ‘reasonable and customary’. So I put the email in my Trash bin. Then I came across this column in Vanity Fair, which gave the source for my relative’s latest fictional headline. Augh-The New York Post!

Betsy McCaughey says that our new electronic medical records –EHR‘s (created courtesy of Bush 41) will allow our physicians to enter in our social histories in our EHR’s and then the information will get shared with the IRS and the NSA. Described by website mediaite.com as a demagogue, McCaughey asserts that our private, protected social histories in our EHR’s will ultimately be fodder for data miners. She is also the one who coined the ‘phrase’ death panels.

Betsy McCaughey (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Now, I wouldn’t put anything past the NSA at this point, but isn’t the place to handle this in another piece of legislation, regulating the NSA itself or by filing a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act request) ?

English: NSA EMPLOYEES ONLY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Misuse of citizens’ big data by the government is a bigger issue than 15% of the economy! It deserves more attention than cheap chain emails from people with no real knowledge of the goals of the ACA.